General

The Art Collections Chemnitz are located in the König-Albert-Museum at the Theaterplatz, designed by Richard Möbius and opened in 1909, and accommodate more than 60.000 exhibits.

The museum building, refurbished since 1993, constructionally and aesthetically meets today's highest demands of contemporary art presentation. The museum houses the second biggest collection of works of Karl Schmidt-Rottluffs. With the Museum Gunzenhauser the Art Collections Chemnitz show one of the biggest private collections of art from the first and second half of the 20th century in Germany. The Munich gallerist Dr. Alfred Gunzenhauser donated more than 2.400 works of 270 artists to the museum, among them the world's largest Otto-Dix- Collection with 290 pieces.

Icon of the modern age

During the 1920s Chemnitz brought forth a wide array of interesting buildings of modernist architecture in Saxony. The most important representative of the “New Building” in town was Fred Otto (1883-1944), town councillor of structural engineering. From 1928 to 1930 the main seat of the Sparkasse bank was built, one of the first skyscrapers in Chemnitz made of fine natural stone, simple and plain, without any decoration. For the building’s façade Otto used light, beige-coloured travertine, which provides the bank building with an aesthetically demanding look. Not least the enlivened arrangement of the building structure and the order and form of the windows make for an outside view of the building that is sure to entertain. Inside, the Gunzenhauser Museum houses the Chemnitz Art Collections, i.a. with the most comprising collection of works by Otto Dix.